Editor’s note: This fact check was produced with the help of a journalism student of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines as part of their internship at VERA Files.
Taiwan’s recent severe flooding has caused not only widespread concern internationally, but also triggered a wave of AI-generated photos exaggerating the extent of the calamity.
Facebook posts that circulated online from Aug. 5 to Aug. 7, contained hyperbolic and AI-generated photos misrepresenting it as news content. Its headline read:
“BREAKING NEWS — TAIWAN
Massive Floods Devastate City: Roads Collapse, Buildings Tilt as Emergency Crews Rush to Respond
Taipei, Taiwan — August 4, 2025″
This is a clickbait. The original post redirects netizens to a YouTube link containing a conspiracy video, while other similar posts were used to promote their subscription channels.
Typhoon Danas thrashed southern Taiwan for a month with unparalleled winds, causing four people to die, hundreds to be injured, widespread power outages, and thousands to be evacuated. Photos used in the bogus post exaggerated the depiction of the calamity.
Contrary to what the photos showed, no buildings tilted, neither were there any highway sections torn apart, nor any collapsed bridges due to the heavy and nonstop rainfall that occurred in Taiwan as part of the devastation of Typhoon Danas.
VERA Files ran the photos through the AI-detection tool Hive moderation and found them to have 99.9% likelihood of AI-manipulation.
This was posted by an FB page “EndTimes News” that is claimed to be a personal blog of some digital creator who features fearmongering and clickbait content presented as some sort of ‘prophecy’.
VERA Files has flagged a number of misleading posts on typhoon similar to this.
The misleading posts have so far collectively garnered a total of 37,923 reactions; 4,619 comments; and 7,518 shares.
